MasterChef S’pore Runner-Up Sells Gourmet Sourdough Doughnuts From Home

CR, 29, is a food stylist, photographer and Instagram influencer who has his hand in numerous businesses including Butler Koffee Mobile Coffee Cart, Almost Famous Craft Beer and Moonstone Bar at Amoy Street. The duo met on Instagram several years ago when Gen reached out to him to compliment him on his gorgeous feed. “At that time, I was interested in food photography and was looking for somewhere to intern or get some advice,” she explains. The duo became fast friends and went on to collaborate on ad hoc projects such as festive cookies for CR’s boutique creative agency Chun Tsubaki. When Gen shared her vision for selling sourdough bomboloni, CR thought it was interesting and recognised a gap in the market (they appear to be the first to sell sourdough doughnuts in Singapore). So they teamed up to start Sourbombe.

Gen first started making bomboloni two years ago when she found herself with sourdough starter (a natural wild yeast leavening) that needed using up. “I thought, why not try using it to make doughnuts to see if I like it?” she says. “When I tried them, I didn’t gag! I really liked them because they were a little tangy, had complex flavour, and the dough is chewier (than regular doughnuts). Also, because I use refined coconut oil to fry the doughnuts, they didn’t taste as oily, which made me realise that I don’t like store-bought doughnuts because they tend to have a rancid oil taste.”

Gen is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Culinary Business at the Culinary Institute of America’s Singapore campus. When she made her bomboloni for service day at school, when students cook for real customers instead of just training in the kitchen, they sold out in a record 10 minutes. And that’s how she knew she had a winner on her hands.

Both Gen and CR invested a total of about $20,000 to start Sourbombe. “We work very well together. He’s good with media and design (the box and menu that come with the doughnuts are pretty chic), and I produce and do research and development for our products,” says Gen. For now, she has turned the living room of her family’s five-room Punggol flat into her production kitchen.

Her parents have been extremely encouraging and understanding since they are F&B folks themselves; her father, David Lee, owns popular soy sauce chicken rice restaurant Lee Fun Nam Kee (we prefer the springy noodles to the rice there, FYI), which was started by his father as a hawker stall in Toa Payoh in the 1960s. Interestingly, you can choose to pick up Sourbombe’s doughnuts at the restaurant or Gen’s flat.

“We’re all in F&B, so we are very conscious about cleanliness and where things are placed, so my doughnut production doesn’t affect our daily lives too much and vice versa,” she says.

Photo: Lee Fun Nam Kee

Gen now juggles school, an internship at Plentyfull bakery and making bomboloni, so it’s a good thing she’s young and energetic. In just two weeks since Sourbombe went live, Gen has made 1,600 bomboloni stuffed with lush pastry cream fillings in unique flavours like Hojicha Caramel Crunch and Thai Tea Mango.

The bomboloni are made of naturally leavened dough fermented over 18 to 24 hours, then rolled and fried in refined coconut oil, whose high smoke point and stability makes it an ideal fat for deep-frying. A high smoke point means that the oil can reach temperatures of over 200 degrees Celsius before it burns. One of the upsides of this is that it won’t fill your workspace with smoke (we imagine Gen’s family is thrilled about that). Refined coconut oil is also processed to be odourless and tasteless so they don’t affect the flavour of the doughnuts.

Each bomboloni (except the plain Cinnabombe) is filled with smooth, velvety custard infused with the various flavours. Most of the flavourings like the teas and lavender are steeped overnight in cold milk before the milk is used to make the custard. This cold steeping keeps the flavours pronounced yet delicate. For instance, steeping lavender in cold milk ensures its natural oils are not broken so the resulting custard doesn’t taste like scented soap. Whipped cream is then folded into the finished custard to lighten it.

There are nine flavours, which can be bought individually (minimum order of $15) or as a set of nine.

This basic, unfilled bomboloni is more substantial than your regular doughnut, with the structure of a good brioche yet light and buttery. We like that it has the inherent qualities of sourdough bread — good, rounded flavour and a slightly chewy texture — without the distinct tang (Gen uses a sourdough starter that isn’t overly fermented). The judicious dusting of cinnamon sugar ensures that it is just sweet enough.

This one tastes more of matcha than oolong. The custard is infused with oolong tea and then mixed with whipped cream flavoured with matcha from Kyoto. The resulting flavour is of a mildly sweet floral green tea cream and generously stuffed into each sturdy bomboloni with a dab of Japanese adzuki bean paste.

This fun flavour does veer on the side of too-sweet, but it has that lovely floral depth of cha yen (Thai tea leaves) given a citrusy lilt thanks to the bits of fresh mangoes strewn throughout.

The mildly tart blueberry jam filling is infused with thyme, which gives it a savoury edge. The fruity jam pairs well with the brightly flavoured and refreshing lemon custard.

True to Gen’s word, the lavender in this bomboloni is but a barest whisper and gives the lime-mascarpone filling a nice contrast of flavours. The pastry cream, another name for custard, folded through with rich mascarpone cheese, is fresh and zippy with the surfeit of lime juice and zest that’s worked into it. This is an improvement from when our colleague had it a couple of weeks ago and the flavours were mainly sugary without any zing.

Hojicha fans will love the deep roasted flavour of the milky tea-infused custard. Its inherent savouriness is pepped up by lots of sweet caramel crunchy pearls. Eating this is almost like drinking a hojicha latte while munching on a doughnut.

One of our favourite flavours, this one is filled with a passionfruit custard whose tartness is tempered by bits of caramelised bananas. Like its Thai tea and mango cousin, this too walks on the edge of being too sweet, but we like the complexity of the sweet-tart filling against the tasty, crisp bread.

Those with arachibutyrophobia (the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth; it’s a thing, y’all) fret not. The peanut butter is worked into the pastry cream so that you get all the flavour of good peanut butter in the lush lightness of the custard filling. The homemade rose-infused strawberry jam makes a nice, not-to-sweet accompaniment to the mellow peanut butter custard.

Depending on availability, Gen infuses the cream cheese custard filling with blue cheeses like Stilton or gorgonzola. Our batch was made with a blue cheese from Germany whose rank was more reminiscent of a wet rag rather than the pleasant pungency of say, a Stilton or Roquefort. Suffice to say, this is not our favourite flavour.

Naturally, since CR owns Butler Koffee, you can also order some of the brand’s cold brew options ($8 each) on Sourbombe. We tried the Black Cold Brew, which was deep and mellow with toasty, chocolate notes — a nice foil to the sweet, rich doughnuts.

Extremely well-made, sophisticated doughnuts with a unique texture that’s both substantial and chewy, yet somewhat fluffy and not greasy. However, though most of the fillings are delicately flavoured, we wish some of them were less sweet. Gen and CR hope to open takeaway kiosks across Singapore and venture overseas in future. But for now, they’re saving up for a central kitchen to mass-produce their bomboloni.

Order from www.sourbombebakery.com. Minimum order of $15. Orders are taken a week in advance. Islandwide delivery available for $10 or for free with a $50 spend. Self-collection available at Punggol Place or at Lee Fun Nam Kee Chicken Rice’s outlet in Toa Payoh.

Photos: CR Tan